May Tid Bits

As the spring blooms slowly transitioned to fully formed leaves, the petals fell to the ground like confetti and I loved the look and feel of it all. Almost like a celebration that yes, we truly made it through the harsh winter weather!

 A spectacular sunset following the rain.

Miss Sydney finished her first round of braces!

She got to ring the Braces Off Gong and you can see her holding a picture of what her teeth used to look like. She went through a lot of pain to get that pretty smile!

She suddenly looked so much older without them.

Liesel and Ireland had their Pops Concert.

For Mother's Day I wanted Annie's Mac N Cheese, a charcuterie board and for the family to go on a bike ride together. At one point I was biking next to Liesel and about to pass her when she got a wicked smile on her face. She stood up on her pedals and pumped hard to get ahead of me and she almost looked like a little girl again. 

I fell in love with some flower arrangements. There's no contest when it comes to country roses vs classic roses! Country roses are so much fluffier and pretty!

I'll always love the smell of lilies!

It was actually warm out and the girls had been in the sun. Liesel commented that she was happy her freckles were back because she didn't feel like herself without them.

Sydney fell in love with ube when we were in Hawaii and she'll eat an entire bag of these ube pretzels from Trader Joe's!

I don't remember how it started, but the girl teased me for not knowing a bat in Spanish is "murcialago." I tried explaining I learned my Spanish from teaching the gospel and there's not a lot of discussion about bats when talking about Jesus Christ. To make my point, I called Whitney and asked if she knew the Spanish word for bat- which she did. Apparently there are a couple of verses in the Old Testament that refer to bats. Who knew?

Brent and I made it to the temple!

The warm weather kept Brent's hair hydrated so it curled up, just the way I like it.

The Pilot needed an oil change and I started telling Ireland what they were doing. Now that she's driving, it's good for her to have a basic understanding of how a car works after all. The gentleman doing the oil change offered to let her see how it all worked and he was so kind as he walked her through the different components.

I have no idea how my kids can sleep like this! I'd wake up with an aching back and knees, for sure.

The biggest event in April was dealing with my parents. Mom had been wandering and getting picked up by the police. She wandered right into someone's home. Eventually Dad found her but a savvy police officer said they had to take Mom to the hospital to ensure she was ok and did Dad want to come with and get checked out as well? Turns out his diabetes was out of control so Dad ended up in rehab and then Mom had nowhere to go. The hospital was calling us kids asking for her to be picked up. The closest sibling was Katrina and she happened to be in Scotland. It was a mess and it was time to intervene. 

I won't go into detail, but let's just say many miracles happened to get them situated in a lovely assisted living facility where they are finally safe and taken care of. Although I wish we could have bonded over something else, I came particularly close to Reagan, Logan and Whitney as we navigated a million legal, medical and financial issues. The whole situation was heartbreaking and we all swore to ourselves we would never do this to our kids. Everyone worked insanely hard and I can at least say when we circle the wagons, we really circle the wagons!